The XFL appears to have wrapped up operation for good, and the world will never be the same again. Well, at least for those who depended on the XFL for their livelihood, which in hindsight may not have been such a good idea, but don't listen to me what do I know. I went out and got a real job and here I am second time in 5 years on the dole.
Under this dark cloud of post-Super Bowl football-less-ness, my wife and stepdaughter went out to do the weekly shopping this past Saturday morning, which they do not so much for "gender role" reasons as for "the boys in the house really can't be trusted to not come home having spent $500 on fancy cheeses, raw seafood and nothing else" reasons (it really has happened). As it turns out my wife had gone out with the assumption that coffee and simple breakfasts were readily available at her usual Starbucks locations (it wasn't they're all closed), and ended up at the local Giant supermarket, a place she swore she would never return to but was now hungry and decaffeinated and without concentration. What she described was very soviet... aisles roped off and a single long line to check out the snaked throughout the store from stem to stern.
This seems to be a common condition at Giant supermarkets, as this video from a different location can attest.
While waiting in this check out line back by butchers counter my wife became part of a minor disagreement between "some mean old lady" who had chastised a young girl who had brought her baby into this mess. And this baby, being a baby, refused to keep its mandated home made not free face mask in place. This drove the young girl to tears as she protested that she was only a single mother and had no one to care for her baby while she shopped. Then something nice happened. The crowd gathered around the young lady, offered her moral support, and then paid her for her food.
Even in a situation of the slow motion unraveling of our outsourced to the lowest bidder civilization, where mail delivery may soon become a luxury, where the existing structure strain under the weight of its own failure, where unemployment trends towards starvation, where partisanship becomes more important than lives, and where we become the center of the epidemic that has touched every corner of the earth, there are some signs of hope for the future. We can now see what it might be like if we change our ways and clean up our act. There are some preliminary signs that small businesses are starting to get some help, and there is even some enthusiastic talk about a vaccine by September and be available in a year.
We we do finally come out of this, and we will at some point, some nobody named Julio Vincent on a web site anyone can publish on, Medium, warns us that we need to be prepared for the ultimate gaslighting experience, as corporations and governments use the tools of entertainment to lull us all back to sleep with the promise of the new iPhone every year and a new show on Netflix delivered through your latest Amazon device.
Billions of dollars will be spent in advertising, messaging, and television and media content to make you feel comfortable again. It will come in the traditional forms — a billboard here, a hundred commercials there — and in new-media forms; a 2020–2021 generation of memes to remind you that what you want again is normalcy. In truth, you want the feeling of normalcy, and we all want it. We want desperately to feel good again, to get back to the routines of life, to not lie in bed at night wondering how we’re going to afford our rent and bills, to not wake to an endless scroll of human tragedy on our phones, to have a cup of perfectly brewed coffee, and simply leave the house for work. The need for comfort will be real, and it will be strong. And every brand in America will come to your rescue, dear consumer, to help take away that darkness and get life back to the way it was before the crisis. I urge you to be well aware of what is coming.
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From one citizen to another, I beg of you: Take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all. We care deeply about one another. That is clear. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define — on our own terms — what this country looks like in five, 10, 50 years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.
Maybe there are truly clearer skies ahead, and miracles can happen: Microsoft has done something nice for the second week in a row, and is giving workers 12 weeks of paid parental leave because of school disruptions.